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(AP Photo/Steve Helber) White nationalist demonstrators walk in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017. A t several events at this year’s New Yorker Festival, a sense of wooziness predominated among audience members, who appeared to be grasping for a wisp of hope that the nightmare known as President Trump would soon be over. Alas, experts who graced the stages at three separate events had a common message: Expect Trump to serve out his first term, and perhaps even his second. The liberals of New York City struggled to comprehend how this could be possible. These are the same people who were certain that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential race. These are people who knew Donald Trump as the tabloid clown who had plagued them for decades, his smug mug sneering from the newsstand. They never dreamed that America would go for putting the clown prince from Queens in the White House. Having failed to consider the lessons of Reconstruction, they couldn’t believe that America...

(Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) Pro-Confederate flag and gun supporters rally in Stone Mountain, Georgia, on August 1, 2015. I n the aftermath of Sunday’s attack by a gunman on a country music concert in Las Vegas, the National Rifle Association fell silent. According to police, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded more than 500 before dying at his own hand as a SWAT team bore down on the room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino from which he targeted his victims. As the scale of mass shootings in the United States has risen, a pattern has taken shape: the death of dozens in a single assault by heavily armed assailants, followed by days or weeks of silence from leaders of the organization that bills itself as “America's longest-standing civil rights organization.” The “civil right” to which the NRA commits itself of course is not the right of non-aggressors to live unaccosted by bullets, but rather the right to bear arms, which it claims precludes all...

(Kay Nietfeld/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images) Nigel Farage and Beatrix von Storch at a press conference in Berlin on September 8, 2017 I n Germany, the baseball cap is not a common sight. So when Beatrix von Storch, a leading voice of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), donned a red one, the sight turned some heads, especially because of its similarities to President Donald J. Trump’s signature campaign cap. But instead of the inscription “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” von Storch’s read “ MAKE GERMANY SAFE AGAIN .” On September 24, AfD became the first far-right party to win seats in the Bundestag since World War II, and the third-largest party in the nation’s parliament. While it’s true that far-right political parties in Europe long pre-date Trump’s presidential campaign (see Jean-Marie Le Pen , who founded France’s Front National in 1972), European politicians with xenophobic, racist, and/or misogynist views are finding inspiration in the 45th president of the United States. Nigel...

(Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via AP Images) President Trump addresses the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 19. T hings are not going well for Donald Trump. So he might just blow up the world. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, appears to be getting squeezed to give up the goods on the president. The grip belongs to Robert Mueller, the special counsel whose appointment resulted from Trump’s firing of then-FBI Director James Comey. First there was the FBI’s search-warranted, guns-drawn raid of Manafort’s Alexandria, Virginia, home in July, during which agents seized documents. Now comes word that Manafort has been under surveillance for years because of his work for the pro-Putin political party of former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych, which resulted in a wiretap on his phones issued to the FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some of the calls intercepted involved Manafort’s discussions with Russians about the presidential campaign, CNN...

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Steve Bannon with President Donald Trump in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. S tephen K. Bannon, current Breitbart News CEO and former White House strategist, is everywhere these days, it seems—on your TV, college campuses , and smack in the middle of the midterm congressional elections. The day his blustery interview with Charlie Rose aired on the September 10 edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes , word spread of Bannon’s intervention in campaigns for upcoming U.S. Senate campaigns; he’s backing primary challengers to sitting Republican Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona, Luther Strange of Alabama, and Dean Heller of Nevada. It’s not his own money he’s spending, of course. For this project, as for most recent Bannon escapades, the money is coming from Robert Mercer, the reclusive hedge-fund billionaire, according to Alex Isenstadt of Politico . Also under consideration for the Bannon treatment, Politico reports, is Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and Bob Corker of Tennessee. Their...